Director Kasi Lemmons' Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody offers freshness to the now-familiar story of the very public rise and fall of the iconic pop singer (played with astounding energy and compassion by British actress Naomie Ackie), the tragedy of her descent into drug addiction, her troubled relationship with her father, John Houston (the reliable Clarke Peters of The Wire), and her husband, R&B singer Bobby Brown (played by Moonlight's Ashton Sanders), and the great loss her legion of fans still feel since her accidental drowning in 2012.
Houston's caring relationship with record executive Clive Davis (a wonderful Stanley Tucci) is well-documented, but Lemmons tills new ground in Houston's longstanding relationship with her female companion, Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams), which seemed to sustain Houston through some of her most challenging times, but which the singer made subordinate to her success, her marriage and her devotion to her outwardly moralistic but manipulative father and strict stage mother, recording artist Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie).
Many will go to Lemmons' movie for the music -- understandably -- and they won't be disappointed. But Ackie's performance is so luminescent and assured that audiences initially interested only in the hits will surely be captivated by this young actress. She's marvelous!
Even a film of this length -- nearly 2.5 hours -- cannot be completely comprehensive with a life as complex as Houston's. This screenplay shows some narrative raggedness, its telescoping story is a bit disorienting, especially when players don't age appreciably over the course of the film.
But one thing is incontrovertible: the film's final scene -- the restaging of Houston's American Music Award performance in 1994 -- is riveting. Ackie's performance to Houston's voice track is so spot on that many are sure to study this sequence for years for its elegance and precision. It is fabulous and makes the pain of the loss even more acute.
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